The number of drafts it takes for the writer to craft before the story is complete varies between authors, and even between each writer’s own pieces of work.  Some might only write two or three drafts while others may write many more. 

Take for instance, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which took seven drafts to complete and Margaret Mitchell’s nine drafts over a ten year period to produce Gone with the Wind. It is also said that it took J.K. Rowlings up to fifteen drafts to write her famous first book in the Harry Potter series.  The point is that the final, finished product is not achieved overnight, or easily.  It takes much “tearing down and rebuilding”, or trial and error, and getting things wrong first to get things right. But, all of that hard work will be worth the effort because in the end, regardless of the final draft tally, each attempt builds upon the last and adds value toward the overall story.  Each draft counts, because- you see- our stories often do fall apart before they can fall into place.

Ernest Hemingway once said; the first draft of anything is shit. In fact, it is said that he rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms forty seven times before getting it to finish the way he wanted.  Anne Lamott in her “Bird by Bird” book on writing suggests the same idea when she said; Write an incredibly shitty, self indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft then take out as many of the excesses as you can. She referred to her own three draft process of writing the first draft as the down draft or child draft in which she writes freely whatever comes to mind, like a child, to get it all down.  This is followed by the up draft in which she begins the editing/ revision process and finally she produces the third and final draft, where she line edits.

Recently, I was drawn into a relationship breakup between two people I love very much.  They met when they were in college and remained in their relationship for several years before each of them had made enough poor decisions to wear down the integrity of the bond they shared.  In the end, those mistakes became too much.  The weight they carried eventually grew too heavy to uphold the framework of their relationship- pushing it to crumble into pieces like a neglected old barn that could no longer weather the storms. 

That relationship “tear –down” is not about me, however. I am merely standing on the outside watching their relationship fall apart like a reader with an emotionally provoking book in her lap. They are their story’s main characters who feel the direct brunt of their pain.   All I can do is offer my love, support and sought after advice.  And in that advice, I remind them that it can take many attempts (drafts) to eventually come up with the final product.  They may need to go through several  tear-downs and rebuilds and relationships before they find the right partner OR they could one day rework this very relationship narrative once they have fixed themselves enough to finally get it right.

Each effort we make will help us to know what we truly do want or do not want, what we need or deserve, whether out of a relationship, from a partner, or from a job or anything else, because each attempt moves us forward, either toward someone or something else with whom we are meant to be or toward a restructured version of the earlier failed chapter that will work this time around.  Sometimes, our starting point might be the place we were meant to be all along.  Or -sometimes not.  The only sure way to figure that out is to keep drafting.

Because truly, our stories often do need to fall apart before they can fall into place. None of us are perfect and rarely do we as human beings hit the lottery the first time we play or place first in the race the first time we run.  But, one thing is as certain as the sun rising each morning- every one of those drafts will count toward the end result that will work best for us.

In a February 2009 Writers Digest article, Author Elizabeth Sims said; youneed to give yourself permission to make mistakes because you haven’t forgiven yourself for past ones. Unless your throttle is wide open, you’re not giving it everything you’ve got.  T here will be trial and error, and drafts that contain excess you won’t need, thoughts, ideas and words that won’t work.  But none of that is a waste of time or effort because it will always point you toward the final draft that will work.  

Y.A Author and Playwright D.M. King said in his 2016 Writers Digest article: Six things to consider after you write your first draft”  when he was comparing his first girl crush to writing drafts;  I was so sure she was the one” (she wasn’t). ..that first draft was so easy to fall in love with because of the countless hours you’ve spent together drawing upon the muse and flooding  the page with your once-in-a –lifetime story. In other words, in your first draft you pour it all out- onto the paper letting every thought and word fall out freely without edit or revision or second thought.  You make a big fat mess, like a three year old with all ten fingers dripping in paint as he glides his fingers back and forth to cover the canvas.  He has no idea what his masterpiece will look like when it is finished although he has his expectations in mind, but that won’t stop him from allowing his creativity and imagination from taking the reins in the meantime. 

First drafts will contain errors, mistakes, and even failures. The first draft attempt is where the writer gets to know her characters- what they look like, how they think, what they want from life, and it is where she builds the world in which they will live. It is where she chooses between the different paths they might take and the potential endings they might have.  She will overwrite and underwrite here, but that is okay.  She will figure it all out later when the frenzy fades and she can see more clearly.  This is the place where she lays the concrete for her foundation, where she tills the soil in preparation for the garden she will grow, where she lays down the first layer of primer to prep her walls and it is where she gives birth to the story inside her.

It is in the subsequent drafts where she will cut, tweak, and add accordingly. That will be where she will pull the weeds, smooth out the cracks, and toss out the junk to create something new, something better.  She will tear down and she will re-build.

In the last two chapters of the bible, in revelations 21:1 the word new means fresh or renewed. The new earth will be the old earth made new again by purging out all the age long evidences of sin and the curse, decay and death. The very “elements” will be melted and dissolved in fervent heat…. It is a tearing down of the current sin-broken world and creating new through a complete and perfect recreation. This is true in our stories, in our relationships, in our dreams and in our lives.  As Author Jack Smith says in “ A Writer’s Guide to Second Drafts”  in The Writer Nov/Dec 2022 issue;  If seasoned writers know one thing, they know this; you don’t get it right the first time.

To this point, Victoria Gilbert, mystery writer also says in that same Nov/Dec 2022 article; don’t be afraid to make major changes, you can still retain the heart of your novel while doing extensive revisions.  Don’t be afraid to cut, shift or even add material.  You aren’t destroying your vision-you’re enhancing it. And in that same article Author Marjan Kamali  adds;  you may need to do a complete retstructuring/regutting of the first draft.

Likewise, in the Larry Brooks’ Writer’s Digest May/June 2020 “Revising: Beginning your Story Fixing Efforts”,  Brooks says it this way: A Great Story is like a House of Cards- Each level bears weight and demands artful balance, and when you swap out one card for another the whole thing teeters for a while, until you make it work.  The principles of gravity and balance are the only forces available to make revising that house of cards so successful.

It IS a tearing down, a swapping out of the parts that do not work with the parts that do.  You may need to tear it down more than once but that is okay because our stories often need to fall apart more than once before they will fall into place.  And that is further okay because every one of those drafts counts.  In “Dig In or Cut Yourself Free” written by Andromeda Romano-Lax in the Writer’s Digest Jan/Feb 2022 issue:  the author quotes  Andre Bubus III with this;  I don’t exaggerate when I say that 90 to 95 percent of whatever I put out into the world rose from the ashes of what failed or from what I wanted to write.  To which he adds; Sometimes, he laughs, You throw it all out.  Jordan Rosenfeld in her May/June 2021 Writer’s Digest article; “Open Endings”,  also says it this way; Sometimes it takes multiple drafts to achieve the ending you’ve been seeking.

Like the broken relationship between the two people I love, torn down to allow the time and the space to rebuild themselves – to ultimately land them in the right relationship that will work, the broken pieces from our drafts can be fixed, and made better or discarded to make space for the pieces that will fit. And regardless of how many tears shed or how many promises were broken within each relationship we had, each draft that we thought perfect and permanent while we were there in that chapter at that moment, laid the foundation for a new, improved chapter later.

Each draft, whether in a real-life relationship story or any other life- story, or in the fictional story we craft, has a time and a purpose and those drafts we write and rewrite will always be worth our time, effort and heartbreak because in the end after those parts of our stories fall apart they will fall into place because, well-  every draft counts.

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Dear Reader, I thank you once again for following along on my blog journey this thirteenth year and I hope as you worked on each of your own chapter drafts of 2025, they carried with them much joy, love and good health in addition to the lessons they taught and the memories they created, and that the chapters ahead continue to build upon them.  In the words of Richard Paul Evans’ in his heartfelt story; “The Christmas Stranger”; The promise of life, like a book, is that the end of each chapter is the beginning of the next.  It is my wish that each of your beginning chapters carries with it those lessons and love from each previous chapter.   Because, as is quoted by Soren Keirkegaard  in Evans’ novel’s  acknowledgments;  Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. 

All successful stories should contain multiple turning points at each section of the narrative, with the most substantial turning point located at the tip of the rising action, otherwise known as the story’s climax or the point of no return.  Resting beneath that point are the turning points in each of the second largest sections – the acts, followed by those in each chapter beneath and finally at the smallest sections on the bottom- within each scene. The turning point size and importance diminish relative to each smaller section, lining up beneath one another like Russian resting dolls or steps on a ladder. 

Each turning point has the potential to change the narrative direction, to either draw the protagonist forward toward her goal or desire, or conversely, to push her away toward her story’s antagonist or the doom awaiting her, even if that doom is self-made…the one she may have created for herself.  Without turning points, our characters remain flat, unremarkable and stuck, without any growth or transformation.

In our own lives, we as the protagonists of our life stories, wind our way across the peaks and valleys we create for ourselves in addition to those created for us. We face opportunity and risks, we find hope and we encounter despair as we stumble around and over roadblocks, sometimes running head first into wind gusts so strong we feel momentarily helpless, ready to turn back or give up. Occasionally; however, we reevaluate and change direction as we reassess, or learn from the consequences of our decisions or we awaken to a glaring truth to which we were previously blind.  These opportunities and road blocks make up the turning points of our lives, the crossroads where we make decisions or take actions that move our story in some direction.

It is important in the stories we create to include turning points that impact our entire story, that change the story direction, or impact the character in some profound way, whether the actions are loud and thunderous or as quiet as tears sliding silently down a child’s cheek. Although our characters will have various moments throughout their story to make decisions, form opinions, or become impacted by situations and unfolding events, it is only those moments that  affect the  full story  that we would consider to be turning points.  If what happens alters the story’s path, or prevents the character from going back to her original status quo, or if it enlightens or transforms her through an epiphany or moment of discovery, it is a turning point. Conversely, if what happened does not alter the overall story it would merely be something that happened.

Jamie Gold, in her article on Turning Points, distinguishes between events that are and are not turning points, describing it this way:  the triggering event in a scene—big or small, loud or quiet—doesn’t determine whether it’s a turning point. What makes the difference is if the response or the immediate results indicate significant story-sized change beyond just this scene and the next, and beyond just the normal cause-and-effect chain that links scenes together in stories,

Building on this idea, Courtney Carpenter, in her June 2012 article; Writers Digest; Scene Structure; How to write Turning points, adds ;  Turning points can occur without direct confrontation. A turning point scene might be wholly internal, as when it leads up to a character making an important decision or coming to see the truth about a situation without necessarily voicing that awareness.

Your turning point scene—and it must be a scene, not a summary—can show this change in the character’s life or consciousness through thoughts, action, or dialogue. But it must grow naturally out of what comes before so that the turning point is credible.

We identify turning points in our lives as a crossroad, the moment of truth, a milestone, the climax, an important juncture, the culmination, a critical moment, the point of no return, a pivotal moment, a hinge or transition.  Despite the label we give it; however, and whether that moment is large or small, loud or quiet, black or white, the impact that moment makes on our overall story’s outcome is monumental,  our life forever changed because of it. 

Sue Mell says in her July 2022 Writer’s  Digest : 5 tips for Writing and structuring effective turning points for your characters: A turning point is just that: a left turn here, a right there, a bit of round and round, until something gives way to change—or a stance against it.

One example of a well known literary turning point is when in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird,  the protagonist narrator Scout Finch, observes her father/lawyer Atticus Finch, defend Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape. This turning point propels Scout to confront the harsh realities of her world, forcing her to face the deeply ingrained narrow-mindedness and injustices that saturate her world, serving as a trigger for Scout’s moral awakening, consequently reshaping her beliefs as she maneuvers through the convoluted pot holes of the human condition. That turning point is where she learns the true meaning of kindness and open mindedness toward others. It is her point of no return.

Two other examples of famous turning points include when in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games, the protagonist’s sister Prim, is selected for Tribute, and the protagonist, Katniss voluntarily replaces Prim in order to save her, forever changing Katniss’s life direction, and similarly, when in L. Frank Buam’s Wizard of Oz, the protagonist Dorothy discovers that the wonderful  and mysterious wizard of Oz is nothing more than an ordinary man who does not have the power to grant her  wishes, that the true power she sought was hiding within her own heart and will all along.  

How many times in our own lives have we made a life- altering decision we later wish we made differently, or engaged in a  life- changing behavior we wish we could erase, or said something we deeply regret? Or we observed an act that permanently changed our world view- all of which impacted the direction of our overall life story.  If only, we could turn back time, rewind or erase that moment, and reverse what we did or what we observed or what we heard.  If only….. Maybe things would have turned out differently? Better?  Or on the other hand, what about the opportunity we took that led us to the good fortune we have now?  The decision we made that led us to the people in our lives-that were meant to be there; the places where we decided to hitch our tent and call home?  The family we grew?  The lifestyle we achieved for which we worked so hard and now get to reap the benefits of the seeds we once sowed. 

So many turning points with so many potential directions to which they could take us, so many different possible endings to our story.  It is these turning points of our fictional stories and in our real lives that shape who our characters become and where they end up, that shape who we become, that map out our overall life narrative, and determine our characters’ and our own ultimate fate that awaits us in the final sentence of the last paragraph on the last page of the last chapter of our story.  All because of those turning points that changed the direction of our story.